


The Adventure of the House That Was Not Empty

by ancientreader



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, almost larky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian Moran, matchmaker. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventure of the House That Was Not Empty

Dr. John Watson, of West Sussex, awakens at two-forty a.m. from a pleasantly poignant dream in which Mary was greeting him upon his return from Afghanistan. It takes a moment to work out that the sound which woke him was made by someone downstairs, moving stealthily.

Dr. Watson is a sensible man, so he keeps his illegal Sig in a locked box under his bed and the ammunition in another locked box in his closet. This practice probably saved Mary’s life more than once when his PTSD was at its worst, but just at present it means he has only an RAMC-captainly demeanor and some rusty hand-to-hand skills with which to address the matter of who is creeping through his house in the dead of night.

 _The chief weapon of the Spanish Inquisition is surprise. Surprise, and fear._

John reaches for the trousers he keeps at the foot of the bed, belt already threaded through the loops, for quick dressing to meet late-night medical emergencies; it won’t do to surprise and frighten the intruder by flashing him. Then, thanking himself for having chalked the floorboards so they don’t squeak, he steps carefully to the bedroom doorway and listens. He can just make out the sound of someone trying to steady his or her breathing, as if after a chase. Wouldn’t that be a brilliant PSA? “Because I didn’t spend my adolescence with my iPod’s volume turned all the way up, I’m now, at nearly forty years old, able to work out exactly where in my house the stealthy intruder is hiding.” 

Down the steps, barely breathing himself; sidling along the wall of the living room. The intruder is a man, or just possibly a tall bulky woman. He (so John decides, going with the likelihood) is crouched behind the long curtains to the French doors that lead to John’s back garden. Careful, careful, soundless, John creeps forward. The Man Behind the Curtain has directed all his attention outward: good. He holds a rifle. This is less good. John closes one hand around the other fist and brings his joined fists straight down on top of the intruder’s head, as hard as he can. Forearm at the man’s neck, John sends him crashing sideways, rolls him onto his belly, sets a knee in the small of his back, and clutches his wrists to bend his arms up enough to hurt, a lot. “Well?” 

“MI5.”

“Right. I’ll just let you up, then, shall I?”

The man shifts to rise. John leans down to grind him into the rug and with his free hand starts to undo his belt for an improvised restraint. The French doors, already open, swing wide. “You could simply point the rifle at him,” someone says.

John doesn’t look up. “Yes, and then I’d have to keep it pointed at him while I fetch my mobile, call the police, and wait for them to arrive. So finish getting my belt out of my trouser loops, will you? And then I can tie my friend’s wrists together with it and leave you to sit on him while I fetch some cord.”

The unseen person tsks and drops something onto the prisoner’s back, next to John’s knee. “You may as well use those.” 

The voice is a baritone. Really very … sexy, John notes, deploying the PlastiCuffs. “Ta. Got another set for his ankles?”

“What,” says the baritone curiously, handing them down, “leads you to believe he’s not from MI5?”

“Real MI5 staking out my living room in the middle of the night? Anyway, he’d have ID from Scotland Yard or something.”

“Your conclusion was correct, but your logic is atrocious,” says the baritone. “You’ll have to work on that.” John tests the cuffs, wrists and ankles, goes through every pocket he can find on Mr. Fake MI5, feels up and down his legs and arms for more weapons (knife in an ankle holster, check), takes off his shoes and socks – the socks stink; wrinkling his nose, John stuffs them into the shoes and ties the laces together. He picks up the rifle, the knife, the laced-together shoes, sits back, and for the first time looks up. 

“I’m buggered,” he says.

“Apparently not at the moment.” But all at once the baritone seems to go out from under himself. He folds straight down, like a Slinky compressing, and fetches up on the floor next to Mr. Fake MI5, quite still.

Who says: “There. You recognize him. It’s that fraud of a detective. He kidnapped the two kids, you saw it on the news—”

“Yep,” says John. “You’ll be wanting to hold your tongue now.”

He gets up, sets the rifle, the knife, and the shoes on the coffee table, and drags Sherlock Holmes ( _Sherlock Holmes!_ ) to the sofa, but his shoulder isn’t equal to lifting the man up onto it. John closes the French doors, tosses the throw from the couch on top of Holmes, and heads for the kitchen with the shoes, sparing a moment to register the fact that he’s not the least worried about leaving Holmes with a gun and a knife handy. He bins the shoes and socks, puts the kettle on for tea – two cups; Mr. F. MI5 isn’t getting any – finds his electrical tape, and goes back in the living room and tapes up the prisoner’s mouth. “Sorry, but on further thought I’ve heard all I need to from you.” He passes a few rounds of tape over the man’s wrists and ankles too, for that little something extra.

Holmes has roused from his faint and is watching John, eyes narrowed, mouth open, as if John were a fungus with some remarkable property – sentience, perhaps. 

John says: “You’re undernourished and probably dehydrated. I’m bringing you tea with milk and sugar, a very large glass of water, and a sandwich, and when you’ve eaten and drunk—”

“You have questions,” Holmes puts in.

John rolls his eyes. “Yes, because I’m not a consulting detective, so I have to ask the questions rather than pull the answers out of my mysterious visitor’s head. Get on the couch if you can.”

Instead Holmes levers himself up and, swaying, starts to follow John. 

“All right, wait, put your arm around me, I’m not dragging you all the way into the kitchen if you pass out again. _Wait,_ let me get the weapons.” He gets Holmes situated at the kitchen table and considers him. “Jesus, you’re skinny.”

Holmes looks down.

“Been a rough three years, then.”

Irritably: “Since you can see it has, and I know it has, what is the point of saying so?”

“Expression of sympathy.” While the tea steeps, John gets out bread, sliced chicken, butter. “Which you would know and smoothly accept if you were the sociopath you’re claimed to be.” He puts the sandwich and tea in front of Holmes and pours him a glass of water. “Small bites, small sips, I’m very much not interested in seeing any of that again after you swallow it.”

Holmes looks mulish but obeys, somewhat to John’s surprise. “Give me your phone,” he says between mouthfuls. Bemused, John hands it over from the kitchen counter.

“Mycroft. … No, Moran’s been dealt with. … Yes, Mycroft, I do use the passive voice for a reason. … That’s right. … A – ” Holmes breaks off and considers John. “Hm. An invalided army doctor. Rather efficient at unarmed combat in spite of his shoulder wound. … Crept up on him from behind and knocked him down, in a word. … Yes. … Mycroft, shut up. You’re interfering with my digestion.” He terminates the call and pockets John’s phone.

“Oi,” John says. Holmes – _pouts?_ – and returns the phone. John ostentatiously puts it in his trouser pocket. “And I’m not dialing 999 because … ?”

Holmes flaps a hand. “Waste of time. Mycroft would only have to disappear the paperwork.”

A qualm emerges, awkward and immense: “I haven’t just set up that man out there for extrajudicial execution, have I?”

“Don’t be an idiot. Mycroft will be delighted he’s alive; it makes it much easier to question him. After that they’ll find something convenient to charge him with.”

John considers this. The man _was_ trying to kill Holmes, and he isn’t from MI5 any more than John is, and this whole episode has the aura of something bigger than ordinary crime, what with an assassin creeping around in John’s living room and the world’s one and only consulting detective materializing out of the back garden after having vanished three years earlier … All right. But: “Who is this Mycroft, anyway, and don’t you need to tell him where you are? Also, how did you know all that about me? And don’t stop eating.”

“One: my brother, and also the British government. He’s insufferable, but you’ll be meeting him in an hour or two and will be able to judge for yourself. Two: no, because your phone is GPS enabled. Three: you must be joking. You stand like a soldier; you incapacitated James Moriarty’s – that’s the late Richard Brook, to you – chief assassin in under a minute, unarmed; you favor your left arm and were unable to lift my dead weight onto the couch even though I am, as you so delicately put it, skinny; and the sign at the foot of your drive reads ‘John Watson, M.D.’ This is of course to say nothing of your response to my physical condition. Want more?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You’re a widower. Your wife died a bit over three years ago, probably of late complications from radiation treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma when she was a teenager. You loved her greatly. Recently, you took a job in London, and you’re moving quite soon. Have I missed anything?”

John takes a deep breath. “That was … brilliant. Bit close to the bone, but— Yeah, amazing.”

Holmes’s eyes widen. “Really?”

“What did you think I was going to say? ‘Piss off’?”

“As a matter of fact … ”

“No,” John says. “No.” He feels buoyant – truth be told, has been feeling that way since the moment Holmes said, “You may as well use these,” and dropped the PlastiCuffs on Moran’s back. The feeling spreads itself out into a smile. 

Holmes, rapid-fire, and watching John throughout: “Your ring finger is unmarked. You might be unmarried but involved, but the obvious candidate would have to be the woman you’re with in several photos in the living room. You’re not divorced from her or you’d have removed the pictures. In the photo on the coffee table your hands are clearly visible. You wore a ring. No more ring, and that for a while now since your finger no longer shows signs of your wearing one, but not divorced: so, widowed. Widowed how? She must have been in her mid-thirties. From the shape of her neck just under her jaw, it’s apparent she had lymph nodes removed. In one so young, that suggests Hodgkin’s. Treatment is largely successful but can have late sequelae. The cardiac complications seem most likely to prove fatal. So, myocardial infarction. The date I gleaned from that memorial notice you have stuck to your refrigerator. Are you going to punch me?”

“What? No!”

The papers used to call Holmes a show-off, a poser, even before Richard Brook – no, James Moriarty – killed himself on the roof of Barts, leaving behind that much-quoted note about how he had been driven to this extremity by Holmes’s endless harassment. But maybe “show-off” is just what people call someone they dislike when he demonstrates an extraordinary gift over and over in the ever-fading hope that some person, somewhere, will delight in it. Holmes is all over startled pleasure. 

“What about the job in London, then – how’d you know that?”

 _God_ , what it is to watch this bedraggled, hungry peacock raise his ornamental feathers. First, a superior expression – the opening flourish. Then: 

“You’ve at least a dozen books of London history out there, plus an _A-Z_ and an Oyster card. Those, and a load of rubbish paperback mysteries. Where else could you possibly be moving to? The real question is why you remained – Oh.” Holmes presses his lips together.

“Spot on,” John says. Mary had had family and friends in Sussex; knowing how badly damaged her heart was, she and John had elected to stay close. He tests the ache behind his sternum: still there, but the lacerating, bone-crushing misery of his first year without her really does seem to be gone. He’s ready for London, for the noise and the crowds and the tube and everything else he had let go, willingly, for his wife’s sake, when he was invalided out of the RAMC half a decade ago. 

In the silence, Holmes pushes at the crumbs of his sandwich. 

“Still hungry?”

He shakes his head. “Thank you” – formally.

“Call it payback for the PlastiCuffs. I want to take your blood pressure and check your pulse now that you’ve had a bit to eat and drink. You said your brother would be an hour or two? You could shower, if you liked, if you’re steady enough on your feet.”

“Yes—Yes, that would be … I haven’t had access … ”

“Yeah, it may surprise you, but that fact’s apparent even to the untrained observer.” This startles a laugh out of Holmes. Again there’s that burst of air inside John. The feeling – so effervescent, so alive down to the ends of himself – is nothing like the interest he’s been trying to gin up in dates since he realized he really had said his farewells to the old life. _You_ do _know how to pick ’em, Watson._

Most patients stare off into space while you check their vital signs – something about being, for the moment, reduced to a source of data, John thinks, or maybe a response to the passivity of being handled; but Holmes watches, considering and alert, eyes narrowed. John feels his cheeks heat under such close scrutiny – literally close, as he holds Holmes’s wrist to take his pulse. It’s as well Holmes is so badly in need of a wash: the smell of him is a big help in keeping John’s mind on a professional track. The patient’s amused snort just as John is thinking this, however, is no help at all. _Dr. Watson_ straightens up and busies himself wiping off the ’scope with an alcohol pad. “Your blood pressure’s 100 over 70 – a little low, but I think you’re safe to shower on your own.” ( _“On your own”? Oh,_ shut up, _John._ ) “Pulse 96, and your respiration’s 14, so all in all not bad.”

“Though skinny.” 

“Boyishly slender, then – better?”

Holmes assumes a lofty expression, as if his vanity had not at all been piqued.

 _Piece of work, aren’t you? Jesus._ “Ah, let me just check on – what’s his name, Moran? – and then I’ll get you situated.”

Moran has managed to roll face-up and is glaring at the ceiling from above the tape on his mouth. He’s rubbed the tape on the carpet, trying to remove it, but has got only as far as giving himself rug burn. John returns him to his belly, checks his restraints, and takes his pulse and counts his respirations. Doubtless Moran’s blood pressure is elevated, under the circumstances, but that’s tough. A snarling noise emerges from behind the tape, and for some reason that of all things makes John lose his temper. “Shut up, do! You decided to crawl around my living room in the middle of the night trying to kill a person, and it turned out not to be the best choice of location. So sad, too bad.”

There’s an explosion of laughter from the kitchen doorway, where Holmes is leaning against the frame. “What?” 

“You ought to have gone in for headmastering. Six of the best for any miscreant.”

“In your dreams.”

_I did not just say that._

But he and Holmes are looking straight at each other, and a hot bright thread runs between them. 

“You know,” John says finally, “I know who you are, and you know who I am, but we still haven’t introduced ourselves. I’m John.”

“Sherlock. Yes, I think given I’m about to remove my clothing we ought to be on a first-name basis.”

Muffled fury from the floor behind them.

*

John sets Sherlock up with a couple of clean towels and a toothbrush and, while he’s showering, gets out pants, socks, and a T-shirt; none of his trousers will fit Sherlock, but it’s no fun getting back into your fetid underwear when you’ve just had your first wash in days. That was one of the better practical lessons from Afghanistan, along with how to move quietly and disarm an enemy when awakened from a sound sleep. He thinks about the Sig, but he’s still carrying around Moran’s rifle and ankle knife, all the armament he can reasonably manage, so he just finishes getting dressed instead. 

Sherlock comes out of the bathroom looking somewhat unsteady again, and puts up only token protest (“I never sleep when I’m working a case”; “Well, if you haven’t slept in three years I’d say it’s high time for a nap”) as John shepherds him into the guest bedroom and points at the duvet meaningfully. 

Can someone flounce into a bed? Apparently so, even while wearing someone else’s boxers and a T-shirt that’s both too baggy and too short. 

“Mycroft—” 

“Yeah, about Mycroft. How will I know I’m talking to him and not someone else I have to knock down and tie up?”

“I’ll say, ‘Hello, Mycroft, dreadful to see you as always.’”

“Eight years old, that’s what you are. Let us suppose, Sherlock, just hypothetically, that I’m downstairs when the next set of guests arrive, whereas you’re up here. How will I know Mycroft?”

“Tall git with ginger hair, a long nose, and a paunch. Oh, all right, I suppose he might have dyed the hair, or cut off his own head to spite himself, or gone on a diet. Ask him what I wanted to be when I was a child.”

“And the right answer will be … ?”

Inaudible.

“A _what_?”

“A pirate.” With that, the brilliant and peevish consulting detective Sherlock Holmes is fast asleep. 

 

*  
John is dozing in a straight chair in front of the bedroom staircase with Moran’s rifle in his lap when a tall ginger in a beautiful suit strolls through the French doors, stepping right over Moran. Accompanying him are three SAS men and a gleaming young woman who’s dressed like a high-end PA but who walks like a soldier. Sherlock has been asleep for perhaps an hour.

John rises.

“Dr. Watson,” says the tall ginger.

“What did Sherlock want to be, when he was a child?” John fervently hopes to hear the correct answer, because it’s one thing to take down an armed man when you can surprise him, but he will admit to being out of his league when faced with three SAS men and one individual of the species My Pinky Is a Lethal Weapon. If the ginger isn’t Mycroft Holmes, then the best John can hope for is to buy Sherlock about four seconds to wake up and run right out the first-floor window.

The Lethal Pinky smirks down at her mobile. The ginger simply replies: “I see. The once and future pirate is asleep upstairs.” To the SAS men: “Take Moran. Anthea and I shall return in the car later.”

One of the SAS men slings Moran over his shoulder and the other two flank him through John’s garden and out to the personnel carrier idling in the drive. Wheels scrape on gravel and the taillights disappear around the dogleg where the drive meets the road. Meanwhile, the Lethal Pinky named Anthea, or anyway so addressed, has sat herself on John’s sofa, absorbed in her mobile. A day ago John would have objected, at least inwardly, to being ignored by her, but apparently his dance card has since filled. He says to Mycroft: “What, I get to keep the rifle?”

“And the knife from Colonel Moran’s ankle holster. After all, your allegiance is not in doubt.” Mycroft’s smile achieves the unusual condition of being at once sincere and not at all reassuring.

Going with the sincerity, John sets the gun down on the chair. “I know your brother’s been … away, for a while. Guest bedroom’s at the end of the hall, on your right. You’ll want to look in, I guess.” He would remain down here, give the brothers their privacy, but Mycroft says, “This is your home. Please do lead the way,” so John does. 

For a man wearing such posh shoes, Mycroft Holmes moves quietly. He doesn’t hurry, either. He gives a hm of approval at the squeak-free stairs and hall – so he’s not, or not merely, a high-end intelligence bureaucrat, then – and when he reaches the doorway of the guest bedroom only the intake of breath suggests an emotional response. He looks into the shadowed room for a long while. “Little brother,” John barely hears him say, and then he turns around and walks back down the stairs. 

At John and Mycroft’s return, Anthea nods and goes out – the triviality passes through John’s mind that the back garden is getting a lot of foot traffic tonight – returning a moment later with an overnight case, which she hands to Mycroft, who in turn gives it to John. 

“Please give this to Sherlock when he awakens. He’ll find a change of clothing, his wallet, and a new mobile. I can send a car for him, or he may prefer to return to London on his own. I’ve left a text on the mobile with some pertinent information. Good night, Dr. Watson.” And, with as little inflection as if he were speaking to a postal clerk from whom he has bought stamps, he adds: “I am most grateful to you for saving his life.”

Then a motor turns over in the darkness, and Mycroft Holmes and the Lethal Pinky are gone.

John shakes himself out of his astonishment, closes and (feeling ridiculous) locks the French doors, picks up the overnight bag and the rifle, and goes upstairs to bed. He is, he finds, very sleepy indeed.

 

*

When he wakes, it’s late morning and he feels as if someone has just handed him a ticket to ride on the space shuttle. Sherlock isn’t in the guest room but he’s dumped the contents of the overnight bag on the bed and, presumably, dressed himself, given that John’s pants and T-shirt lie in a heap on the bathroom floor. _Oh no you don’t,_ John thinks, _I’m pressing Rewind on that right now._

Sherlock is sitting at the kitchen table reading from a notebook, a laptop open in front of him. John has already thrown the pants and T-shirt at his head by the time he registers that the notebook and laptop are his own. Also, Sherlock has apparently removed the entire contents of the refrigerator and the kitchen cupboards and eaten one bite out of every item. “What the fuck,” John says.

“You did the experiments,” Sherlock replies. “Why did you do that? I see when you did them, you at least label your notes clearly even if your laboratory technique is pitiful, but why?”

“Pick up my fucking underwear, will you?”

“But you threw it at me.”

“Because you left it on my fucking bathroom floor instead of putting it in the fucking laundry basket that was right in front of your fucking face. What are you doing with my notebook and my laptop?”

Apparently intuiting that it would be well to produce a conciliatory gesture, Sherlock picks up the underwear, but then frowns at it in confusion and sets it on his lap. It may be at this precise moment that John sees the entire future trajectory of his own life and acknowledges that he is about to make certain choices that will render any resistance on his part futile. He sighs and sits down across from Sherlock.

“Last night, while you were noticing things, you might have noticed that Mary died just before you disappeared.” 

Sherlock nods. 

John clears his throat; this is unlikely ever to be easy to talk about. “After she died, I was spending a lot of time on the Internet. Aimless, really. But I read the news stories about you, how you’d kidnapped these kids, how you’d trumped up accusations against a small-time actor. Weird enough to be interesting even when I couldn’t sleep or eat. So I had a look at your blog. ‘The Science of Deduction.’ I meant to scoff, but … that page about tobacco ash. How to distinguish dozens and dozens of types. You were so, so _precise_ about it. What a strange thing to make up, if all you wanted to do was ruin some nobody for no reason.

“I’d nothing better to do with my time, I couldn’t work much, I was useless, so I started ordering tobacco online and then burning it. The same kinds whose ash you said you could distinguish by sight, and it wasn’t easy at first, but the more I looked at the ash the more I could see what you were on about. 

“So then I had a go at a few of your experiments. How fast this or that organ’s tissue decays in one or another kind of soil. What shoeprints look like if you’re wearing corrugated soles and have walked through the refuse of a farm market at the end of a busy day in July. It was ridiculous. And it was all spot on. 

“And I thought, _He’s not a fake._ Or _‘wasn’t,’_ because I figured you were probably dead. But that was what I came round to: that Rich Brook was James Moriarty, the way you always said he was. And whether he was really dead or what, I couldn’t work that out at all, but I used to argue with people, defending you. I suppose they thought I was a bit mad with grief. Which, yeah, I was. But I could still tell half a dozen kinds of tobacco ash apart.”

Sherlock stares at the notebook. “People … marvel at me. Or they ask me to do a, a species of party trick. They become angry. That happens often, people becoming angry. They don’t try my experiments for themselves. No one has ever ...

“I didn’t understand, last night, why you didn’t let Moran go when you looked up and saw me. The fraudulent consulting detective. That’s why I went through your – ” Awkwardly, he shoves the notebook and laptop in John’s direction.

John tries in vain to think of any other time when he has heard a person confess, essentially, to bewilderment at being understood as human. “It’s fine,” he says at last. His voice comes out hoarse. “It’s all fine.”

Sherlock goes on: “Moriarty is dead. This – the past three years, it’s been a matter of closing down his network. But I watched him shoot himself. Through the roof of his mouth, in fact, so, yes, quite dead.”

“Well,” John says, gravely, “he wasn’t much to speak of, anyway. As an actor.”

Sherlock looks startled – “On the contrary, he carried on the most elaborate” – and then, for which John gives thanks, he bursts out laughing.

“And given the location of the wound, there’s no chance of zombification,” John continues.

“None, none whatever. Although, John, I must tell you that there are certain parasites – ”

“No, shut up, shut up now, different rates of decay in various soils, that’s all fine, but we’re not discussing zombie-creating parasites over breakfast.”

“I’ve eaten,” Sherlock says. Triumph.

*  
Over the next hour, John bullies his houseguest into handing him all the cartons and boxes and bottles he raided out of the refrigerator and the cupboards, so that John can put them away; and into going upstairs and putting the underwear into the hamper; and into drinking a glass of water and another cup of sweet, milky tea, because John would bet his medical license that Sherlock is still somewhat dehydrated. He’s having his own second cup when the French doors open ( _I I_ know _I locked those last night_ ) and the Lethal Pinky steps through, eyes on her mobile.

“The car,” she tells it.

John hands Sherlock the overnight case. 

“I’ve a flat in central London,” Sherlock says.

“Ah.”

“The second bedroom’s free.”

“Ah.”

“You can have it.”

“But, you see, I’ve already rented a place.”

Scoffing: “Hammersmith.”

“And I’m not in the market for a flatshare, besides.”

“No, of course not. Well, several cases await – ”

“No they don’t. You haven’t even returned from the dead yet, you liar. Anyhow, I took the number of your mobile last night, while you were asleep.”

Sherlock doesn’t move.

“Because there _is_ something I want.” _Deep breath._ “A date.” And John Watson, MD, late of the Royal Army Medical Corps, recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry, who neutralized James Moriarty’s most dangerous assassin although himself unarmed, screws up his courage, raises himself on his tiptoes, and pulls Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, who is about to reappear publicly for the first time after three years spent dismantling the world’s largest and most pernicious criminal network, in for a kiss.

“Oh!” says Sherlock Holmes, looking flummoxed. “Yes. All right.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, endless gratitude to MirithGriffin for brilliant beta help, general hand-holding, and cherished friendship; and particular thanks here to strangegibbon and TSylvestris, who helped me out with a point of London-related snobbery that had me banging my head against the wall. If I got it wrong in the end, that's not their fault!
> 
> Should you, like John, wish to avoid breakfast conversation on the subject of zombie-creating parasites, then I adjure you not to read Carl Zimmer’s enthralling _[Parasite Rex](http://carlzimmer.com/books/parasiterex). _  
>  Don't say I didn't warn you.
> 
> July 14, 2016: I'm delighted and honored to say that there is now a Russian translation of this story, by [Shimmering](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shimmering/profile). Read it [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4567416/11815504?show_comments=1#com45826020).


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